


Outside

by Sonora



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: (I think?), (screw the movie canon I mean seriously so sad), Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Spoilers, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 00:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14124189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: After Pitfall, Raleigh wants to leave.  Mako doesn’t.





	Outside

She’s there when he dies.

Only just.

And _only just_ because she only just got the call from Tendo about the Marshal - well, Marshal no longer, considering that Ranger Hansen had waited all but a month to toss command off to somebody else and disappear without a trace.

Taking Raleigh with him, apparently. Which explains a lot about his erratic behavior there after Pitfall. Not that anybody had known about 

At the time, when Raleigh took off, she’d thought he was getting better. He’d told her as much; told all of them as much.

 _Docs cleared me for travel. Thought I’d pop home to see Jazmine. Little sisters, you know how it is_.

Protecting her to the last, apparently.

Because that had been a fucking lie.

Sure, he’d gone back to California to see his sister. For all of five days. And then he’d come up here, with Ranger Hansen, to...what, exactly?

Mako can remember her father once telling her that a true warrior died alone. That he faced his death with a steady gaze, that he kept his mind fixed on duty and held to the knowledge that all life is fleeting. That it is that very thing that makes it so sweet. That there is no shame in it.

But the samurai didn’t die of radiation poisoning and aggressive, malignant cancer, now did they?

“He didn’t want you to see him like this,” Ranger Hansen tells her that morning, when she shows up at the Anchorage hospice facility, frantic and frazzled from sixteen hours in transit. “Didn’t want you to see what was coming. His mum went out like this, you know.”

“You had no right...”

Her former commander and mentor just gives her a chilling look, but asks in that very polite enlisted-man way of his if she wouldn’t like to grab a bite before Raleigh wakes up?

And Mako knows, feels, somewhere deep in her bones, this is her fault.

+++++

“Do you ever think about what you’re going to do? You know, when we’re done with,” and Raleigh waves a hand at the IV bag.

She’s better off, standing again. Leaning on her rolling IV stand, but on her feet. “I have not thought much about it.”

“I’d like to do a road trip. You ever been on a road trip?” His gaze is faraway. “We did them sometimes when I was a kid. Kind of terrible with three kids in a car, but fun too, you know?”

Mako shakes her head, because while she understands _him_ , she doesn’t always understand him. “No, why would something terrible be fun?”

“Because sometimes sharing the shitty thing with somebody else makes them special.”

She laughs. “I do not need shitty things with you.”

He huffs a small chuckle and leans back in the hospital bed. “I’d like the see Yellowstone. We never got there. And maybe the Four Corners. They have some Indian ruins Yancy always wanted to photograph...”

“What about what you would like?”

He shrugs. “I just want something simple, nice, clean.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” and he coughs into his sleeve - one of those cable-knit sweaters of his she’s since learned were all made by their mom for Yancy, “something that isn’t this shit.”

And then, Mako thinks then she knows what he’s talking about. 

But she doesn’t want those things. 

Things away from here.

The PPDC has been her life. Its uniforms and rhythms and food and people. Its culture. Its mission. The PPDC’s purpose had long ago become her purpose; more than revenge, this was home. All she had left. All she had solid left in the world was inside this Shatterdome.

“No,” she says. “This is where I’m happy.”

But what she means, deep down in a place she can barely acknowledge to herself, is that this is what she is. This is all she is.

Outside of this ‘Dome, she doesn’t know if she’ll even exist.

The next day, the official word is that Raleigh’s getting better.

A week later, and he’s gone.

+++++

“He’s missed you, you know.”

It’s the first thing Ranger Hansen has said in the past twenty minutes. 

Raleigh’s in hospice, and a nice facility at that - apparently the American DoD sprung for a private facility instead of sticking him in a VA- so they don’t have a proper chow hall. Instead, Ranger Hansen took her across the street to a little cafe where neither of them ordered anything but coffee. 

“I... I did not know he was this bad.” She stares down at the table. “Has he...” _mentioned me, missed me, asked for me?_

“Wasn’t my decision to phone you,” comes the answer, “but that’s mostly because he’s, well, you saw.”

Raleigh did look terrible. Body wasted to almost nothing, open sores on his arms, all manner of machines hooked up to him. He’s on palliative pain medication; keeping him comfortable, as comfortable as could be. 

“I am sorry,” she says, bowing a little, shaking. “I didn’t mean to leave him...”

“He’s a stubborn SOB,” Ranger Hansen sighs. “He says he wasn’t trying to run.” He shrugs. “I didn’t ask him to explain himself.”

“Did you offer, or...”

“He asked. Wanted some company, he said, but I think he was worried about going alone. Asked me if it would be a problem, after,” and Ranger Hansen waves _watching my wife and child die_ away with a far too flippant flick of a hand for it to be anything but pain. “I told him a road trip sounded like fun.”

Mako feels another wave of guilt wash over her. “It should have been me. I didn’t know...”

“It’s okay. He didn’t want you to know.”

 _But I was always going to find out!_ she wants to scream, but doesn’t. “Why...like this?”

Ranger Hansen smiles a little. “We go back a ways, believe it or not. Always had a soft spot for him, especially after Manila.” The smile grows a little softer, like he’s remembering something special, but then it fades. “And I needed...not that. Over twenty five years of my life, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.” He looks away. “I can’t do it anymore.”

“But you did so much. Surely...”

Ranger Hansen just sighs again, and looks at his own coffee. He hasn’t touched it. “Want to go back, see if he’s awake yet?”

+++++

Raleigh isn’t.

She waits.

Gives her time to notice things.

Max is curled up on top of the covers at Raleigh’s, licking a paw. He seems happy, but judging from the way he keeps up into her hand when she pets his wrinkly head, he knows there’s something wrong. 

There are flowers and cards all over the room. Most have probably been opened by the staff, although there is one on the nightstand that catches her eye. It’s hand-drawn, a crude little crayon rendering of a planet with a bunch of kids holding hands around its length. Inside, in what is clearly a teacher’s handwriting, it says _Thank you for saving our home_. It’s a first grade class here in Anchorage.

There’s a photo of Yancy and him, the one taken on graduation night — _when we both got so drunk you couldn’t stand up and the Gages pulled that prank you remember it bro you remember?_ \- with it’s snippet of Drift-born memory coming back to her.

There’s a creased, battered, well-loved _Lonely Planet Guide to Post Kaiju America_ sitting on the little rolling dinner table. 

Mako doesn’t know what to do with any of this.

He’s been gone for six months now.

She wonders how long he’s been sick.

She wonders if it would have been better if he had died in Pitfall.

She wonders what he thought of her, choosing the PPDC over his trip.

She wonders why he didn’t tell her.

She’s furious with him, furious with herself, but then, this is the man who taught her there could be something more to life than fury. Or revenge. That there could be some things worth living for. That there could be something else. That they could all be something else.

Mako doesn’t know what to do at all.

So she sits, and she waits for Raleighto wake ups. So she can tell him. 

What, though, she’s not sure.

“Hey,” he finally croaks, one blue eye cracking open. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Mako can’t help it. She starts crying.

+++++

Mako gets four hours with her drift partner. Her best friend. The man she loves, but was never _in love_ with.

“I’m sorry I did not come with you.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, no, I should have...”

“I get it. It’s okay, Mako.”

 _Mako_. She’s going to miss the way he says her name, miss his presence, his easy compassion, the way he always seems to know who and what he’s about, how he doesn’t _need_. How he has faith, how he always seems to be reaching for something bright no matter how dark it gets around him while she has been so stuck in so many things and-

And as if catching that thought through whatever ghost drift they might still share, he smiles at her, squeezes her hand.

“All you have to do is fall.”

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously like I don’t even know. Have issues with the new movie but, like, my life’s the typical mess so...this? Hooray anxiety attacks.


End file.
